Tuesday, June 21, 2016

DA Gets APD Time Card Fraud Case

Brandenburg Says Case Under Review For Possible Prosecution

BY DENNIS DOMRZALSKI The New Mexico State Police has completed its investigation into possible time card fraud at one of the Albuquerque Police Department's area commands and has turned the case over to the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office for possible prosecution. DA Kari Brandenburg told ABQ Free Press that her office got the case late Monday afternoon and that it is under review. She declined further comment. In a request in May to the state police for details of the probe, ABQ Free Press said the allegations of impropriety involved a lieutenant and a sergeant at that it dated back to at least August of 2015. The newspaper's inquiry also said that an officer was allegedly allowed to claim at least 10 hours of overtime each pay period—overtime that was apparently was never worked and for which there was no documentation. Shortly after the newspaper broke the story about the investigation, the city of Albuquerque's internal auditor said her office would look into APD's overtime practices. “We are going to look at the police department from a control perspective to see if there are internal controls that should have detected this [the alleged fraud], or if there should be controls in place to detect it,” Debra Yoshimura, director of the city's Office of Internal Audit, said in May. “It was on our audit plan last year and we did not get to it, but with this recent revelation we decided to put it back on. We suspected there might be problems, and this has brought it up in priority.” The audit was to begin in early June, Yoshimura said.

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ABQ Free Press is devoted to analysis, interpretation and explanatory journalism on topics affecting the lives of people in Albuquerque and New Mexico. A significant portion of our effort is devoted to uncovering what the state’s other media overlook.